Resources and notes to assist students of 2107GFS-Visual Story, semester 2, 2012, and 2013. All blog images and posts are copyright 2012 the respective copyright holders, and for academic use only.

“[A good artist is] one with imagination and the ability to tell a good story. How well a man draws cuts no ice with me, if what he’s trying to express comes out vague and choppy.” ‐ Jack Kirby

(Sherman cited in Morrow (ED.) 2004, (vol.1) p. 181).

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

"A few things we've mentioned that you should keep in mind" Storytelling points from Week 3 Powerpoint.

Again, here are those points I found within the notes that were a nice basic summary of some of the overview points we've been discussing in class. Think about the example scenes we've watched in-class, where these points were used, and ultimately, how you can adopt these conventions into your own storytelling language.

Know the rules before you can play with them, to make your sequences entertaining.

•2.
Building tension. Show the audience what the characters don’t see. Cut to a
bomb counting down. Show shadowy figures in the background.

•3.
Use Close-ups (C/U’s). Draw the viewer into the action.

•4.
Establishing shots. Give your viewers an overview of who is where to help them
follow the action.

•5.
Cut-aways. Shots of a
character’s fingers twitching, or trophies on a wall, can say more about a character
than lengthy dialogue.

•6.
Extreme Close-ups. An extremely close shot of a character’s eye, mouth or
finger will help enforce the urgency in what is happening.

•7.
Point of View shots (POV). Show the audience what your character sees from the
character’s view point. Point of View shots (POV). Show the audience what your
character sees from the character’s view point.

•8.
Motivate your shots. For instance, in order to have a POV, you need to first
show the character looking
toward something, which motivates a cut to their POV.

•9.
Over the Shoulder shots (OTS). This draws the viewer into the action and makes
a scene more intimate.

•10.
Use as many drawings as necessary to show the action. (But concise storytelling is a skill in itself. Why use 3 shots when 1 will do?)